The present invention relates to a method for driving a gas-discharge display such as a plasma display panel.
There has been known an image display device having a plasma display panel (hereinafter called a gas-discharge panel). In order to drive the panel, each field of a composite video signal is divided into a plurality of sub-fields on time axis. The sub-fields are differently weighted in order to impart a tone to the image on the display. Namely, the light emitting time from the energization of a pixel to the erasing of the light during the period of the sub-field is determined in accordance with the value of the weight.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open 4-195087 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open 5-41841 disclose driving methods for the gas-discharge panel. In the method, the time length of the sub-field is increased as the weight becomes large to increase the period of time for emitting the light in the gas-discharge panel in order to increase the luminance of the picture. However, the time length of the sub-field is limited by the time necessary for lighting all rows of the sub-field. Furthermore, in the prior art, the light emitting time is not so long compared with the un-lighting time. Consequently, the luminance can not be increased over the limitation.